Supporting non-oil Exports in Saudi Arabia

ICIEC and NCB sign Memorandum of Understanding to support smallandmedium-sized enterprises operating in Saudi Arabia

JEDDAH, 21-10-2012, Under the auspices of H.E. Sheikh Saleh Abdullah Kamel, Chairman of Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and under the supervision of Mr.Abdul AzizNasserAl-Sorayai, Chairman of the IndustrialCommitteeof the Chamber, and in the presence ofa large numberof Saudi businessmen, the Islamic Corporation forthe Insurance of Investmentand Export Credit, "ICIEC", a member of the Islamic Development Bank Group signed aMemorandumofUnderstanding(MOU) withtheNationalCommercialBank(NCB) onSaturday, October 20, 2012, attheheadquartersoftheChamberofCommerceandindustryinJeddah.

The MOU was signed by Mr. Khemais Al-Gazzah, the Operations Director and the Acting CEO of ICIEC, and Mr. Adnan Bin Himd, Senior Vice President of NCB.

The MOU provides co-operation between ICIEC and NCB in supporting small and medium enterprises operating in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to encourage them to export and to provide solutions to meet the funding problems. Under the memorandum ICIEC will provide insurance services by 90% of the credit facilities provided by banks of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME’s).

Commenting on the MoU, Dr. Abdel RahmanTayebTaha, the Chief Executive Officer of ICIEC, CEO said, "The signing of the MOU comes within the framework of the role of ICIEC in supporting to boost development in its member countries.

The MOU is mainly to help SME’s in the Kingdom getting financing to their non-oil exporters.

"Saudi businessmen are very active in doing business worldwide, and the Financial Institutions in the Kingdom are the first address that any Saudi Business can think of getting financing to export, and ICIEC is the only multilateral export credit insurance providing services with sharia compliant which Financial Institutions can rely on”. He added

"This agreement is a continuation of the activity carried out by the ICIEC since its inception in 1994, in supporting of exporters, banks, and Saudi businessmen, as the volume of business insured by the Corporation in the Kingdomis more than USD 4billion. We are confident that this MOU will help to increase the size of non-oil exports to the Kingdom” Dr. Taha said